Supreme Court rules House Republicans waited too long to challenge maps
[April 10, 2025]
By Ben Szalinski
SPRINGFIELD – Illinois House Republicans waited too long to file a
lawsuit challenging legislative maps drawn in 2021, the Illinois Supreme
Court ruled Wednesday.
As a result, the Democrat-majority court will not hear the case.
House Republican Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, along with a group of
individual voters, asked the court to reject the current legislative map
for its partisan bias and lack of compactness. House Republicans wanted
the court to appoint a special master redraw the districts.
They alleged the voting district maps are not “compact,” a requirement
of the state constitution, which has led to allegations of
gerrymandering in favor of Democrats.
The plaintiffs argued court cases in other states and at the federal
level required them to gather data from multiple election cycles with
the maps in place to show a pattern that proves the maps aren’t compact
and were drawn for partisan benefit. But the court said McCombie’s
caucus waited too long to make their case.
“Plaintiffs could have brought this argument years ago,” the court wrote
in a short two-page opinion. “Their claim that waiting multiple election
cycles is necessary to reveal the effects of redistricting is
unpersuasive.”
Republican Justice David Overstreet was the lone dissenting justice.
“They had the chance to make this right just to give the voters the
chance to pick their representatives instead of representatives picking
their voters and they declined,” Rep. Dan Ugaste, R-Geneva, told
reporters.
The court’s ruling follows a similar case in 2012 that challenged the
compactness of the 2011 maps. In that case, the court dismissed the
challenge as untimely even though it was filed just eight months after
the maps were enacted.
Attorneys for House Speaker Chris Welch, D-Hillside, and Senate
President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, were allowed to intervene as
defendants in the case, which was originally filed against the State
Board of Elections.
“To allow plaintiffs to proceed now, mid-decade, with their proposed
redistricting challenge would invite political parties to wait until
they have a wave election and use their best election results to justify
a partisan challenge to the legislative map,” the Democrats’ lawyers
said in their filing.
The court wrote that five years since the 2020 census, population data
might also be “stale.”
“Plaintiffs’ approach would also be prejudicial and create uncertainty
for voters and officeholders alike, now and in the future, as to whether
any redistricting plan in Illinois is ever final,” the court wrote.
The court’s decision not to hear arguments on the case is the latest
blow to various Republican legal efforts to throw out maps drawn by
lawmakers and instead force an independent commission to draw new maps.
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House Republican Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, speaks to
reporters at the Illinois Statehouse on Wednesday, April 9, 2025
after a ruling by the Illinois Supreme Court. (Capitol News Illinois
photo by Ben Szalinski)
A lawsuit from multiple parties challenging the map was dismissed in
2021 by a federal three-judge panel, which rejected arguments that the
map diluted the voting strength of racial minorities.
The court’s ruling on Wednesday noted Republicans did not appeal those
rulings.
The Illinois Supreme Court blocked a 2016 citizen-driven referendum
attempting to create an independent redistricting commission. The lead
plaintiff in that case was John Hooker, a now-convicted conspirator in
the “ComEd Four” corruption case. Federal courts also rejected
Republican efforts to throw out the 2011 legislative maps.
In the case thrown out Wednesday, Republicans argued that more than half
of the current House Districts were less compact than a district the
state’s high court tossed out in 1981. They also said Rep. Lisa
Hernandez, D-Cicero, who led the House redistricting process for House
Democrats in 2021, admitted during debate that the maps were drawn for
her party’s political gain.
The Princeton Gerrymandering Project, which assesses legislative maps
around the country on several metrics, gave the current Illinois House
map an “F” grade for its compactness metric.
Republican leaders said they will review possible additional legal
options in this case, but their next steps toward enacting independent
mapping will be outside of court. Rep. Ryan Spain, R-Peoria, said he
wants to try another petition drive to force a ballot referendum on the
issue.
“It’s up now to the voters to take this baton and run with it,” Spain
told reporters. “We need to have voters initiate the redistricting
reforms that were cut down.”
Republican lawmakers also want to pursue judicial ethics reform, arguing
Democrat Justices Elizabeth Rochford and Mary K. O’Brien should have
recused themselves from the case after receiving campaign contributions
in 2022 from a political action committee run by Harmon, who intervened
as a defendant in the case.
Capitol News Illinois is
a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government
coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily
by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation
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